People often wonder why the so-called ‘right’ is so hostile to Critical Race Theory (CRT), even and especially as it’s taught at the primary or secondary level. One answer might not be all that obscure. CRT presents America as a failed experiment in government by the people. It’s been, and continues to be seen by the aggrieved as, government by some of the people, at the expense of the rest of the people, and more particularly at the expense of BIPOC people. That understanding of their country makes people, black or white, either resentful of their country or ashamed to be a part of it. And people who are not proud of their country tend not to put a whole lot of themselves into defending it. In short, CRT undermines patriotism, and an undermined patriotism invites military humiliation.
If this is right – or even part of what’s right – is Ron DeSantis right to try to ban CRT from the educational system in his state? Most Canadians would say no. We’d say no because we reject patriotism. We reject it because we find it a burden without compensatory payoff. Fair enough. But does it lack compensatory payoff because we don’t anticipate we’ll have to go to war? If so, then we should be able to at least understand the Republican mind-set.
To be honest, I suspect that CRT is undermining American patriotism. From my Canadian point of view, that may not be a bad thing. Today. But what about tomorrow, or the day after that? Being unable to defend ourselves if push ever came to shove, we might need the Ugly American and the jingoism we find so ridiculous.
And to be sure, ridiculous it is. The Nuremberg rally and the pre-game show at the Super Bowl don’t look a whole lot different, do they? Well, except that the Germans had Hugo Boss. But I digress.
As I say, I think there may be something to this conjecture. What is all this palaver about woke-ism coddling the American mind if not that it breeds a level of pacifism that might prove inadequate to the military challenge that nation might soon have to face? If CRT is rendering Americans less enthusiastic about defending each other, it’s unlikely they’ll be any more enthusiastic about defending Taiwan.
Is drawing this connection a bit of a stretch? Perhaps. It’s certainly not a connection being made by the right-wing media in the U.S. Is it because the connection’s not there? Or is it because it is?
Categories: Everything You Wanted to Know About What's Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask, Social and Political Philosophy
Paulosophical Vimplications 
There is Youtube video called How Baby Boomers Ruined Society (link below), which I watched with that uneasy discomfort you get when someone’s criticism of you lands. One of his points is that the Korean War enjoyed a lot less popular criticism than the Vietnam War did. Yes, the Korean War was successful in that it kept the communists from over-running what is today a major democratic industrial ally, while the Vietnam War was a failure in terms of American war aims at the time.
But at the time before, say 1968, it was not obvious that Vietnam was going to be a failure, although the ARVN did seem decidedly unwilling from the get-go to fight in its own defence (just like Cold War Europe.) Even though the Tet Offensive of 1968 was the final defeat of the Viet Cong it still doomed LBJ’s presidency. So why the difference? The Baby Boomers were little kids during Korea. By Vietnam they were of draft age. The Baby Boomers made draft dodging respectable, putting the porcine lipstick on it that war itself was immoral just because we said so. How convenient. The Youtuber says that in any other time and place it would have been reprehensible to undermine a nation’s war effort by not only refusing to fight but getting valourized for it.
You can argue that the undermining by the privileged of patriotism began with us. Of course, like you, as a Canadian I have to have two minds about that.
Promo ends at 2:20. Politics and the draft at 23:35
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I agree with DeSantis banning educators from teaching CRT to children because I agree that children should not “feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the person played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex.” Kids have enough childhood issues without heaping on the burdens of adult guilt and anguish.
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Agree. CRT is a form of child abuse or, more charitably, using unwitting children in the service of an adult political agenda.
Someone, not me, has remarked on how quickly the Left went from, “CRT is a graduate-level political theory. It’s not even being taught in public schools. That’s just the Right trying to find a bogey-man” to “The Right is evil for telling us we can no longer teach CRT in public schools.”
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